Our latest Lay of the Land video series features an interview with Silas Berkson, the Client Success Manager at CommonGround. In it, you’ll learn how this for-profit company helps farmers and farmland owners connect around leasing farmland in Illinois and beyond.
CommonGround is an online farmland marketplace and support platform that helps connect landowners with farmers seeking access to land. These are mostly, by the way, farmers and landowners pursuing conventional row crop production through leasing opportunities.
CommonGround focuses on values-aligned matches and provides tools, guidance, and facilitation to support long-term, mutually beneficial land relationships. CommonGround primarily does this by enabling landowners to set up online auctions for leases of their farmland that farmers bid for.
“As beginning farmers find it increasingly difficult to access land, CommonGround and our program have common goals,” says Illinois FarmLink’s Nathan Aaberg. “Yet we also have largely different audiences. On the conventional row cropping side, we’re happy to point people to CommonGround’s unique services. Likewise, CommonGround will be pointing people interested in local and sustainable farming in our direction for farmland access help.”
CommonGround staff, like our team, see first-hand that maximizing revenue is not necessarily the only thing landowners care about. This offers an opportunity to alert and thoughtful farmers who can distinguish themselves and their growing practices.
Silas shares a story of an older woman and her daughter who, through CommonGround, were able to nearly double the rent the mother was getting from her land after becoming widowed. This was a big deal as the mother relied almost completely on the rent for her living expenses. Watch the interview to hear more of the details.
You’ll also learn more about how CommonGround started and what insights their team has gained by working with so many farmers and farmland owners.
Feel free to reach out to Silas directly at [email protected] or visit their website at www.commonground.io if you have any follow up questions or are interested in getting more information.